Wright Chat

[Tom]

Heard about this building last night with friends over pizza and beer.
Evidently the entire complex is being adapted as an upscale hotel.
It was designed by HH Richardson, landscaped by Olmsted.
A visit to the Martin House with a stay overnight here sounds like a good trip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson_Olmsted_Complex

https://buffaloarchitecturecenter.wordpress.com/

https://www.hotelhenry.com/

BTW - From almost exactly 1860 -1865 HH Richardson, a native of Louisianna,
was in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He had smart parents.
_________________
"taste is less important than non-conformity"
FLLW

[SDR]

Count me as one who has always been more inspired by Richardson than by Sullivan. It is clear that Mr Wright paid greater homage to his primary mentor than to a chronological predecessor, no matter how persuasive.

But I continue to worship at the altar of the Ames Free Library, Glessner house, and Marshall Field Wholesale Store---and I suspect Wright found something useful in these structures as well . . .?

S

[pmahoney]

The current hotel has eighty-eight guest rooms, restaurant, and banquet facilities. The original main building still has 350,000 sf of undeveloped space. The Lipsey Architectural Center will likely open in 2019. It is meant to be an orientation center for all things architecture in Western New York.

Over the next two years they expect to iron out what additional uses will be incorporated into the complex.




https://www.buffalorising.com/2019/04/the-connector-whats-next-at-the-richardson-olmsted-campus/

https://www.visitbuffaloniagara.com/press/story-ideas/lipsey-architecture-center/

[Tom]

Wow
and amazing this complex was never razed to the ground.
_________________
"taste is less important than non-conformity"
FLLW

[SDR]

While we're trading stories, isn't it the case that the demolition contractor went broke taking down the Marshall Field Wholesale Store . . . ? Or was it some other late lamented structure . . .


https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55ef0304e4b03f4c029572a4/t/56045a5ee4b0b5d0c71d9f2e/1443125854463/1000w/

S

[Tom]

I'd always heard that about Larkin
_________________
"taste is less important than non-conformity"
FLLW

[SDR]

Ah---thanks. That's perhaps what I'm thinking of. I can't find a reference to anything odd or ironic about the demolition, in O'Gorman or Condit. Here's a
nice little history of the building, however; it mentions the materials used on the exteriors, and their dimensions, along with a photo of men standing in a
window of the building, giving a sense of the scale of those stones . . .

http://glessnerhouse.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-marshall-field-wholesale-store.html

S

[Reidy]

I'd heard it about Midway Gardens, attributed to Wright himself.

[SDR]

There you go. I recall that, too, now.

I have a feeling that Pat will be able to set us all straight, on this matter . . .

S

[Roderick Grant]

Definitely Midway. In Autobiography, pp 192-3, FLW talks about the decline and ultimate destruction of Midway ending with:
"The contractor who removed the buildings found them so solidly constructed that he lost more on the contract than it was worth."

[Paul Ringstrom]

We stayed at the Henry Hotel (https://www.hotelhenry.com) shortly after they opened. They were still working out the kinks in running a hotel/restaurant, etc. It is not a cookie-cutter hotel, fairly funky.

The hotel only takes up one of the many buildings that comprised the Buffalo Psychiatric Center (formerly known as Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane). See the satellite view here: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9291135,-78.8823961,682m/data=!3m1!1e3

from Wikipedia:
The large Medina red sandstone and brick hospital buildings were designed in 1870 in the Kirkbride Plan by architect Henry Hobson Richardson with grounds by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.[5] The campus consists of a central administrative tower and five pavilions or wards progressively set back on each side, for eleven buildings total, all connected by short curved two-story corridors. Patients were segregated by *, males on the east side, females on the west. The wards housed patients until the mid-1970s. The central administration building was used for offices until 1994. In 1973, the Asylum was added to the National Register of Historic Places and in 1986, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.[1]
The campus, the largest commission of Richardson's career, marks the advent of his characteristic Romanesque Revival style. When emulated by later architects, this style is referred to as Richardsonian Romanesque. It has been the subject of a long-term preservation campaign. Nevertheless, three pavilions on the east side were demolished in the 1970s to make way for newer psychiatric facilities.[6] In 1927, the northern farmlands were transferred back to the State for the development of what is today Buffalo State College.[7]
_________________
Owner of the G. Curtis Yelland House (1910), by Wm. Drummond

[Tom]

I think I'd forgotten about Richardsons Marshall Feild store.
What a handsome building.
and what an imbecilic act in its destruction.
Anybody know what stands now on its former location?
_________________
"taste is less important than non-conformity"
FLLW

[Roderick Grant]

Tom, you forget, real estate development is the American religion. If an existing building gets in the way of profit, get rid of it. Nothing else is sacred.

If Notre Dame had been in NYC instead of Paris, by now it would be a parking lot while a team of developers plotted the next use for the lot that would pay the highest dividends.

In a way, Polymath Park is heretical.

[Tom]

Never thought of a religious analogy in realtion to real estate before.
I'm not a Marxist, but there is a sense in which he was on the money
when he wrote about religion as the opiate of the people.

Here's to heresy!!!!
_________________
"taste is less important than non-conformity"
FLLW

[JimM]